Independent Study: Thursday - Period Three

[wandering-stone.livejournal.com]

The students were instructed once again to meet Jones at Portalicity today for yet another field trip.

When they arrived they would find Jones waiting patiently outside a glowing portal.

"Today we will be attending a broadway musical," Jones informed them as she motioned for them to follow her through the portal. "I attempted to get tickets for a musical which apparently involved felines and actors in skintight suits. However they were unavailable. Instead I found a musical which involves puppets. I apologize if the medium is too juvenile for you as it contains puppetry and apparently TV's Gary Coleman."

The portal directed the class to New York City and to an alley outside an off-broadway theater.

"Next week we shall be going on another field trip which will deal with a more mature theme. For today enjoy the musical."

History of Poisons, Thursday Per 2

[glacial_queen]

"Some might consider today's class to be fairly gruesome," Karla warned the class outside of the Danger Shop. "I make no apologies for that. Hopefully this will be the closest you come to seeing someone die by violence, but I'm fairly sure that hope comes too late for at least half of you. And for those of you who wish to make your living as healers, warriors, or keepers of the peace, well, this is just one in what will doubtlessly be a long line of corpses. Take comfort in knowing that these, at least, are only an illusion. Simulation. Whatever. If, however, you decide that the class is too much for you, you are excused to the library to spend the rest of the period researching a poisonous plant and writing a two-page essay about it, due in my email by the end tomorrow morning."

The inside of the Danger Shop was set up to look like a private dining room. Around the table were five people; two were dead and the remaining three were in various stages of extreme distress. "Dinner was served two hours ago," Karla said calmly. "Each man was given a different poison. Based on the reaction times and displayed symptoms, it's your job to figure out what each poison was. You may be able to talk to some of the victims, for the rest, you'll need to rely on your observations and the strength of your notes. Feel free to work alone or in pairs. When you are ready, put on your protective gear--" she gestured to several shelves to the immediate left of the door "--and begin."

Library, Thursday [2/12]

[wildandbrave]

Cosette had certainly lived without electricity before, so that in and of itself wasn't necessarily too off-putting for her, and it wasn't that she was scared of the dark, but . . . being mostly left to her own devices in the cold and dark brought her back a little too closely to her childhood.

She had a slightly unhappy expression on her face as she went about her library duties today by the light of a battery-powered lantern (no fire near the books, thank you, and she wasn't going to run down her precious phone battery using that as a flashlight all day), and left the front doors propped open just so she wouldn't feel so isolated.

She was actually glad today that the droid baby kept wanting attention; it kept things from getting too quiet, and helped her keep her mind off of other things.

Self Defense, Thursday

[suitably_heroic]

Never fear, class! Meeting you in the gym this week was Atton again, looking every bit like nothing at all had happened last week. (He wasn't exactly all the way back up to snuff, but he'd made sure they weren't going to do anything in class today that'd give him away. Bad enough Sparkle knew about any of it.) There were tables and gym equipment arranged all over the gym, flipped over and sometimes stacked on top of each other to form a sort of maze.

"I was going to mix it up with some target practice in the Danger Shop today," he said. "But then the power went out. I'm told there's a generator, or something, but I don't really want to try my luck. We don't really need it anyway."

He nodded at the table in front of him. "These are practice blasters," he said. "If you hit someone else with them, it won't do anything. It's just light." Beat. "But don't do that anyway. Your job today is not to shoot each other, but to shoot some moving targets."

He dumped a bag on the table, pushed it open, and hit an unseen switch. A whole lot of little round things suddenly took to the air, floating around in a little cluster. "These are remotes," he said. "They can shoot back, but since this is a beginner class, I've programmed them not to. If they do, it's because they broke. Which happens sometimes. If it breaks, call me and I'll be happy to come over and grind it into a paste. Stupid droids."

The only reason he was even relying on them was because Bao-Dur had given him a crash course on remotes way back when that left him sort of confident they wouldn't break in, like, the next hour.

"Anyway, as soon as I hit the right button, these remotes are going to spread out all over this gym. Your job is to go out and hit as many of them as you can with these blasters. You hit one, it gets recorded here--" he tapped a datapad in front of him, "--as a point. You hit one of your fellow students, hey, two points get docked. Don't hit your fellow students."

There.

"Now go. Shoot things. It's therapeutic!"

The Art of BS [Thursday, February 12, 2015, 4th period]

[professor-lyman.livejournal.com]

"Thanks for leaving your blanket forts and suff to come to class," Josh said, still in his trenchcoat and scarf with his hands stuffed into his pockets for warmth. (No, he couldn't look more like a Washington yuppie if he'd also been carrying a copy of the Washington Post and bitching about the Metro.) "Hopefully you've all used your smooth moves to get dates to the dance tomorrow. Today we're going to riff off of the old 'this isn't cold. Let me tell you about cold' that people do when it's, frankly, ass cold outside and they're mostly trying to distract themselves from how hard their teeth are chattering."

He stomped his feet to improve circulation. "We'll make this fast, then you all can cut out early and head back to the dorms, okay?"